


and this time (I'll make it right)

by perfect_little_fool



Category: La La Land (2016)
Genre: Canon Compliant, F/M, Fluff, Reimagined Ending, angst if you squint
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-03
Updated: 2017-01-03
Packaged: 2018-09-14 10:18:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,452
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9176614
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/perfect_little_fool/pseuds/perfect_little_fool
Summary: In the city of stars, two of the brightest ones collide again.(or the one where I just needed one last thing for the end of this movie. so I wrote it.)





	

**Author's Note:**

> I needed this. Let me know if it's terrible.

It was a faint murmur, a gentle hum of the piano keys that was lulling down her eyelids. It was an involuntary move once they officially close, a deep breath filling her lungs as the soft melody seeps through every pore of her skin and down deep into her bones. 

All of it brought her back to hazy mornings, warm kisses, and light feathery touches on her hips as she stirred. Returned her to a time when she loved wearing heels since it put her closer to his height. Reminded her of when his record player would scratch near her ear as they laid on the couch, his hand ruffling through her hair absentmindedly as he read over yet another old article about another old jazz musician.

Thickness gathered in her throat, the live music not _enough_.

As her eyes open back up, the dark room around her slowly coming back to her watery vision, she dares a glance over at her husband to her right. His aged face had a small smile graced at the corners of his lips, his hand that winked with his wedding band crossed over their chairs to lightly hold her hand. The thickness got thicker at the sight. 

Years seemed to stretch by as Sebastian kept playing the piano, his fingers almost swimming over the keys, his head bent over the instrument with that fond look on his face. 

Mia had fallen in love with the way he played piano. Which made it easier to fall in love with him.

-

She remembers the one time she called him when she’d been in Paris. It had been a spontaneous idea, something she knew she shouldn’t do but something she did anyway. Her finger had been pressing his name in her contacts before she could stop herself. The pulse at her neck beat messily under her skin as the ringing grew loud in her ear.

“Mia?”

Not a hello, just a question of her name. He also knew this wasn’t something she should do—they had an agreement. They were pursuing their own lives, doing their own thing in this ridiculous predicament they had found themselves in called life. But that didn’t mean she didn’t think about him. All the time. 

“Sebastian,” she breathed right back, her hand coming up and pressing against her forehead as she curls into herself. The script in her lap crinkles as she folds her upper half to her lower. 

There’s a brief moment of silence before his centered voice finally spoke again. “How are you?” His measured way of talking, the straight-forwardness of it all would always catch her off guard. But the familiarity of it made her stomach flutter. 

“I’m doing well,” she replied back, the friendliness between them stretching their physical distance even greater than it already was. “How are you?”

“Just fine,” he responded. Her heart pounded faster. 

“Good,” she hushed low. The auburn curtains of her hair were happily hiding her flushed face. She could hardly believe she had actually called him—what did she think they would say?

_I’m always gonna love you._

Her mouth flattened into a line as she wraps an arm around her center. A feeling like no other had begun to curl there. The quiet continued, neither of them speaking. At one point she heard his throat clear as he shifts. “You still there?” he asked with a hint of worry. 

She had nodded, a stray tear rolling down that she brushed away without a second thought. “Yeah, I’m still here.” She threw her head back to will the tears down, trying to dry the moisture that had built up in what seemed like seconds. “I just wanted to call and say…” Her words fumbled as she tried to find the right ending to the sentence, “…hi.” Her throat closed right then and there.

_I’m always gonna love you, too._

Mia had to slap a hand over her mouth so he wouldn’t hear the sob that almost snuck past her lips. Her fingers gripped the phone in her hand with paper-white knuckles. 

“Well, hi,” he returned then, the tone of his voice telling her with distinct satisfaction that he was struggling to hold back a smile. The weird feeling in the pit of her stomach lessens by a hair. “Have a safe shoot. I gotta go.”

“Okay, yeah. Have a safe…”

She trailed off, the blunt reality hitting her that she had no idea what he was up to. Had no knowledge of his current job or projects. The ellipses in her response to him hung in the air, in the thousands of miles they both constantly thought about. She never finished. 

“Thanks,” Sebastian answered before a falling of three notes signaled the end of their call.

-

Watching him onstage again for the first time in five years made a slow heat sweep down her body, starting from the cut of her hairline down to the cold tips of her toes. Her husband’s hand in hers suddenly felt foreign, like his skin was too rough. His kind face was now too cut like stone. She felt the room closing in on her.

As Sebastian finishes with a gentle prodding and everyone around bursts into light and full applause, she hears “Should we stay for another?”

Mia’s head turns slowly to meet her husband’s eyes. It was the first time she’d looked at him and thought of another man, could only think of the ghost hands on her waist and the way Sebastian used to rub a thumb over her jaw. She swallows.

“No,” she tries to smile. “We can go.”

She could see Sebastian turn from the piano out of the corner of her eye as she stands to leave with her husband, his open face thanking the audience for their warm-hearted appreciation of his performance. But she knew he could see her retreating back, could feel his steely gaze that once viewed her with such softness digging into the space between her shoulder blades.

And that’s what makes her stop as her spouse goes on ahead outside to get the car, her body halting at the doorway to the main room of the club. His club. The one he must have tirelessly fought and clawed for. Tears prick her eyes again. 

She turns to look back toward the stage where he was now standing just in front of the microphone, the band behind him moving back to their previous positions in order for another song to begin. The audience shifts their attention as the trumpet player lets a long note sing from his horn, Sebastian’s body stepping off the stage. 

Flashes of her blue dress and the Christmas lights sting her eyes. His crumpled sheet music and his crooked tie. His angry eyes and her fond ones. The thickness returns. 

Her feet move of their own accord. She suddenly finds herself walking toward him, her brain overwhelmed with what was present and what was past as Sebastian meets her halfway. His hands find the dip of her waist as her own find their normal grip at his shoulders, their lips meeting before either can think twice of the decision. It was like their first kiss all over again, the tender prodding of lips in the observatory theatre, where they had done what felt like dancing in the stars and finding their own universe. One hand moves up to rub at her jaw, the familiar move making her tears break free and run down her face. The fingers slide from her jaw to her cheek to wipe them. 

As they break apart, their foreheads fall to meet, her breathing shaky. Her crying grows softer now that their mouths were separate. Her fingers were tangled in the lapels of his jacket, her iron grip reluctant to let go. 

“Thank you,” he murmurs. “Thank you for coming to see it.”

Mia knew he meant his club. His finished product—what he’d been striving for for years. 

“I wouldn’t have missed it for the world,” she replies, gently letting her hands relax from their battle with his clothing. His hands smooth away from her torso, the loss of his warmth on her like a headache in the back of her skull. 

And like that, they break away. They share one last look, one last smile, before she turns to go. The miles between them simmer and fade in one moment then, the years of silence closing like the last page of a book. Because she knew that they were okay, that the sun in her chest burned for him just as much as it always had. 

Mia also liked to think his burned for her too.


End file.
